


rewind

by threadoflife



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Gen, M/M, Making things right, POV Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Whump, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 15:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10468527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threadoflife/pseuds/threadoflife
Summary: He says, “Goodbye,” and his body, as it was back in Baskerville, revolts against him: he is shaking; sweating; nauseous; crying. He says, “Goodbye,” throws the phone to the ground, steps forward to meet the abyss.Thump. Thump. Thump, his heart inside his chest goes. Is he afraid? Afraid of the fall?Two syllables.He closes his eyes, and——-rewind.Or: who is Sherlock Holmes, without the mask?





	

**Author's Note:**

> just a short thing that impulsively stumbled out of me after i read something on tumblr i think?

There is a wetness on his cheeks. 

John says, “You could,” and even through the static of the phone line, those two syllables reach with an iron fist inside Sherlock’s chest and _twist_ at his heart. It stutters; stops, for the fragment of a moment; then races. 

Sherlock huffs a laugh. (Thick.) (Haltingly.)

There is a wetness on his cheeks, but he does not know why. 

Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter.

John will be fine. Of course.

He says, “Goodbye,” and his body, as it was back in Baskerville, revolts against him: he is shaking; sweating; nauseous; crying. He says, “Goodbye,” throws the phone to the ground, steps forward to meet the abyss.

Thump. Thump. Thump, his heart inside his chest goes. Is he afraid? Afraid of the fall? 

Two syllables. 

He closes his eyes, and—

—- _rewind._

He is going to die. 

He is going to die.

Not metaphorically, this time: _he is going to die_ , not factually, not actually, but neither metaphorically. His mask has consumed all there ever was to him–he had made sure of that–until there was only the mask itself; hence, once the mask dies, he dies. Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, genius and machine. Cold, heartless. Deduction machine.

He is going to die.

His plan unfolds inside his head before he has taken his next breath. It is a plan that has been in the making since Jim left a marred apple in Baker Street. It is time: the players must take their places.

In his trouser pocket, the inbox of his phone brims with texts: _Get it done. MH_ , as well as a simple _Talk to me_ from John. Sherlock sneered down at the text. _Talk to me._ What is talking going to accomplish? Nothing. Nothing at all.

Yet, talking to Molly will cause the players to take their places.

_Talking.  
_

He falters on his way to Molly; or rather, his heart falters. There is a second of sudden breathlessness that makes him still abruptly–a sharpness in his throat–and then an iron fist inside his chest that _twists_ his heart. When it is over, he stands rigid, unmoving, staring down at his feet in utter confusion, body held wholly motionless so as not to upset it any further. 

His heart stills, and he can breathe again. He is blinking rapidly, and his eyes feel odd. 

He touches his fingertips to his cheek, and it comes away wet. He is crying. Why is he crying? The last time his body had betrayed him like this was Baskerville, but this is not Baskerville now, this is just–it is just–

In his trouser pocket, the inbox of his phone has a text. _Talk to me._

His other cheek grows wet. Sherlock blinks into the darkness, does not realise how his breath comes faster, how the tightness in his chest is back.

Then, slowly, he reaches inside his trouser pocket. He writes a text.

He is crying the entire time he does it, and he does not know why.

When John arrives at last, harried and breathless and graceless–stumbling into the darkened lab at Bart’s as if he’s run miles with hell at his heels, which, of course, he has, because Sherlock wrote, _I need to talk to you. Now. Bart’s. SH_ –Sherlock’s head snaps up. He sits frozen on a stool staring at the door through which John just burst. His cheeks are dry now. 

His chest still twists.

“Sherlock?” John’s voice is rough. “What is it?”

Sherlock cannot breathe. Detached, he catalogues the first pricks of panic welling up inside his body: elevated heart rate and breathing, a dizziness of the entire body, tingling fingertips, skin tight and cold, terror in his chest like pain.

“You okay?” John asks, from far away. All Sherlock can think of is that his breaths are wearing in and out of him too quickly, but he cannot breathe. _He can’t breathe.  
_

“Sherlock?” John asks, much closer now. On Sherlock’s cold skin, his palm registers as sudden burn around the curve of Sherlock’s shoulder. “Sherlock, talk to me. What’s going on?”

There is a register in John’s voice Sherlock has not heard before. There are a lot of things happening tonight that have not happened before.

 _I am going to die_ , Sherlock thinks distantly, suddenly, _and I will tell you._

“I,” he begins, haltingly, hoarsely. “I’m–I’m not what you think I am,” he pushes out through chattering teeth, feels bile at the back of his throat. The iron fist is back around his heart, but he needs to say it. He doesn’t know why, just that it is a necessity. 

“Sherlock?” John is taking his temperature through a hand on his forehead. His face is blurred through Sherlock’s wet, burning eyes. “What–”

“I’m not what you think I am,” Sherlock confesses in a breathless rush, blinking hard and fast. “And I’m going to die.”

Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, genius and machine. Cold, heartless. Deduction machine. 

He takes the mask off. 

“I’m going to die,” he says with his now bare face: exposed, naked skin, raw, _real_. There are tears in his eyes, all over his cheeks. This is whatever is left of Sherlock without the mask. This if the first of him that John sees. 

It feels like dying. It is not the public death that is inevitable, but a much more private, much more fatal death, because–

Sherlock’s teeth chatter. His upper body is wracked in little, sickly shudders. His lips quiver. On top of his thighs, his fingers tremble. Fight or flight. Flight would have been the roof of Bart’s, a fall. This is fight.

This is so much fight Sherlock feels defeated, hollow, a shell. Without mask, who is he? Without mask, who cares? 

Without mask, what will John do?

After long, breathless moments, John murmurs, “Tell me, I don’t understand,” and there is something thick, something undefinable in his voice. He does not lift his hands from Sherlock’s body, shoulder and head. He holds Sherlock. He touches Sherlock, this Sherlock without mask.

“I’m going to die,” Sherlock repeats, thinly, lowly, each word a dagger to his gut. “I’m going to die because Moriarty needs me to. Sherlock Holmes is going to die, but not me. I will fake his death and hunt down Moriarty’s network, and–”

“Hold on,” John says. On Sherlock’s shoulder, his hand tightens. “You _are_ Sherlock Holmes. You–”

“I’m _not_. Sherlock Holmes is a magic trick.” A feeble laugh out of Sherlock’s mouth. “Haven’t you listened? I’m not what you think I am.”

John’s mouth opens, closes. His eyes betray nothing. His hands leave Sherlock’s body, now that he has understood: this is Sherlock without a mask. He has understood, and he does not touch Sherlock anymore. _Obvious. As expected. A fraud, that’s all you are, you–_

John goes to his knees. 

John goes to his knees before Sherlock without a mask, and his unreadable gaze and expressive face are awash in an intensity that pin Sherlock to the spot, that still him completely. On his knees, John cups his palms around Sherlock’s knees, looks Sherlock directly in the face, and says, “You will explain everything to me, and you aren’t going anywhere.” 

Sherlock swallows. Few inches from John’s hands, his own spasm. He says, throat dry, “You don’t understand. I need to die, and–”

“No. Sherlock, I said, you aren’t going anywhere.” John’s eyes glisten. It isn’t the dim light of the lamp, John’s position doesn’t allow for it. Still his eyes glisten.

Sherlock stares at those glistening eyes, mesmerised. He does not understand, but he is mesmerised.

Then John says, fiercely, yet somehow incredibly gently like the paradox he is, “ _Not without me_ ,” and Sherlock Holmes falls apart entirely: the mask loosens, falls to the ground, and shatters, in time with Sherlock’s body bowing forward, in time with the sob that escapes Sherlock’s throat, unfiltered, real, and ugly.

And John Watson stays on his knees before whoever Sherlock is in that moment; he stays on his knees and holds the head of whoever Sherlock is on his shoulder and cups a shaking hand around that head, protecting.

And there, on the floor, beside Sherlock’s own mask, is a second.


End file.
